Arugula Salad Deconstruction

Arugula Salad

Little Leaf Farms

Located in Danvers, MA, just a little north of Boston.

Sustainable development is often defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”  This is the goal of Little Leaf Farms.

Water Conservation
Our greens are grown hydroponically using 100% captured rainwater. Unless New England finds itself in a drought, we will never use our valuable groundwater reserves. We have also built an advanced fertilization and irrigation system that uses up to 90% less water than field-grown greens.

(Hydroponics: the process of growing plants in sand, gravel, or liquid, with added nutrients but without soil.)

Energy Conservation
We use a natural gas-powered heating system that operates with over 95% efficiency. In addition to heating our greenhouse, we have a specially designed system to capture CO2 and use it within our growing system to optimize plant development. Plus, a significant portion of our electricity is generated from solar energy!

Natural Sunlight
Our greenhouse is built to maximize the use of natural sunlight. This starts with using some of the best glass in the world allowing full use of free and carbon-free natural sunlight. Due to low-light conditions during the winter, we supplement the natural light with LED-powered grow lights to ensure consistent production throughout the winter months. Our LED grow lights consume 40% less electricity than conventional grow lights!

Food Miles
Over 98% of U.S. lettuce is grown in California and Arizona and shipped throughout the country. The lettuce on our New England store shelves has been trucked 3,000 miles. Little Leaf Farms delivers our greens to stores within a day’s drive – doing our part to lessen the environmental impact by minimizing diesel consumption and pollution. And the biggest benefit to consumers is our unparalleled freshness, taste and quality.

Today, Little Leaf Farms is proud to have built the most technologically-advanced, lettuce growing greenhouse in the world. And Paul and Tim are excited to share with you the freshest, best tasting baby lettuces available in New England.

From Little Leaf Farms:

We grow our baby greens year-round in New England.
We use 100% captured rainwater.
We never use chemical pesticides. Ever.
We grow hydroponically to protect precious topsoil.
We only ship our baby greens to stores within a day’s drive.

Moving on…

Arugula: what is it and why should we eat it?

Arugula, also known as rocket and rucola, is a less recognized cruciferous vegetable that provides many of the same benefits as the better-known vegetables of the same family - broccoli, kale, and Brussels sprouts.

Arugula leaves are tender and bite-sized with a tangy and peppery flavor.

Along with other leafy greens, arugula contains very high nitrate levels (more than 250 milligrams/100 grams).

High intakes of dietary nitrate have been shown to lower blood pressure, reduce the amount of oxygen needed during exercise, and enhance athletic performance.

Arugula contains significant amounts of the three specific minerals that help control your blood pressure and it also contains a combination of nutrients known to help normalize and control blood pressure levels makes arugula a heart-healthy food.

Another cool fact is that Arugula is an excellent source of several nutrients that support eye health, including beta-carotene, a carotenoid your body can convert into vitamin A. Per 2-cup serving, raw arugula provides about 950 International Units of vitamin A, or 19 percent of the nutrient’s recommended daily value based on a 2,000-calorie diet. Getting enough vitamin A in your diet promotes good vision, particularly at night -- vitamin A is essential to your ability to see in low light. 

What is Frisée?

Frisée—pronounced free-ZAY—is a petite, pale curly endive produced by blanching. It has an opened, flattened shape. Its leaves are frizzy and finely cut, yellow-white to yellow-apple green in color.

Frisée has a bittersweet taste and it’s tender on the tongue unlike other curly endives. Frisée will spice up a salad mix or add a bit of zing to a light entrée such as fish.

Fall is the time that frisée comes to market. Although it is one member of the chicory family that can be harvested during the summer, like other chicories and endives too much warm weather and sunlight can make frisée overly bitter.

Bitter is not the ideal taste when it comes to frisée. Rather peppery is how a good frisée should taste.

Both frisée and plain leafed endive belong to the leafy vegetable group of peppery tasting plants that are often grown specifically for fall and winter salads. Joining frisée in this group are mustard, garden and pepper cress, watercress, arugula, chicory and radicchio.

A traditional dish featuring frisée is the classic Frisée aux Lardons, which is standard fare in the typical French cafe or bistro. It's made by blanching bacon and then dicing and browning it, and then combining it with olive oil, mustard and lemon juice to form a vinaigrette.

The frisée is tossed with the vinaigrette, and then served topped with a poached egg and shaved Gruyère cheese, along with toasted croutons.

The Science behind Vinaigrettes

Vinaigrette is made by mixing an oil with something acidic such as vinegar or lemon juice. The mixture can be enhanced with salt, herbs and/or spices. It is used most commonly as a salad dressing, but can also be used as a marinade. Traditionally, a vinaigrette consists of 3 parts oil and 1 part vinegar mixed into a stable emulsion, but the term is also applied to mixtures with different proportions and to unstable emulsions which last only a short time before separating into layered oil and vinegar phases.

That's a starting point, but vinaigrette must also be wholly or at least partially emulsified!

What exactly is an emulsion? At its most basic, it's what you get when you force two things that don't easily mix to form a homogeneous mixture. In cooking, this most often occurs with oil and water (and for all intents and purposes, vinegar or lemon juice can be considered water, as it behaves in the same way). Put them in a container together, stir them up, and eventually, like cats and dogs, they will separate and stick with their own kind.

There are a couple of ways around this.

The first is to disperse one of the two—the oil, say—into fine enough droplets that water can completely surround it. Kind of like putting a single cat inside a ring of dogs—there's no way for it to escape and rejoin its fellow feline friends.

An easier way to form an emulsion is to add an emulsifying agent known as a surfactant. Culinary surfactants are molecules that contain one end that is attractive to water (hydrophilic), and one that is attractive to oil (hydrophobic). Common kitchen surfactants include egg yolks, mustard, and honey.

It's easy to see the work of a surfactant in action.

The container on the left contains oil and balsamic vinegar mixed in a ratio of 3:1. The container on the right has the same ingredients, with the addition of a small amount of dijon mustard. Both containers were sealed and shaken vigorously until they looked homogeneous. I then allowed them to rest at room temperature for 5 minutes. As you can see, the container without the mustard separated much more rapidly than the container with mustard.

Unless you emulsify your vinaigrette, you end up with a pile of leaves dressed in oil, and a pool of vinegar at the bottom of the salad bowl, completely destroying the flavor of the sauce. An emulsified vinaigrette however, uses the power of surfactants to help both oil and vinegar cling tightly to the leaves. Balanced flavor in every mouthful.

Looking at the greens themselves was even more revealing.

The salad dressed in the badly emulsified vinaigrette showed definite signs of wilting, while the salad dressed in the proper vinaigrette was still crisp and fresh-tasting. Apparently, straight-up oil is much more damaging to leaves than an oil-vinegar mixture.

Adding some crunch: Pistachios

Mostly all nuts have a good percentage of healthy fats and higher protein. Nuts in a salad also bring more density to the dish. These nuts can turn a light snack salad into a full meal.

Pistachios are members of the cashew family. The trees thrive in dry weather with long summers, which help in the ripening of the fruit.

Like other members of the Anacardiaceae family (which includes poison ivy, sumac, mango, and cashew), pistachios contain urushiol, an irritant that can cause allergic reactions.

The health benefits of pistachios include a healthy heart, weight management, protection against diabetes and hypertension, and improved digestion. The vitamins, minerals, fats and protein found in pistachio are all very good for your health. Pistachios are one of the oldest nuts that were commonly used in the world.

Bresaola

Bresaola is air-dried, salted beef (but also horse, venison and pork) that has been aged two or three months until it becomes hard and turns a dark red, almost purple colour. It is made from top (inside) round, and is lean and tender, with a sweet, musty smell. It originated in Valtellina, a valley in the Alps of northern Italy's Lombardy region.

The word comes from the diminutive of Lombard bresada (braised).

A strict trimming process is essential to the rich taste. Legs of beef are thoroughly defatted and seasoned with a dry rub of coarse salt and spices, such as juniper berries, cinnamon and nutmeg. They are then left to cure for a few days. A drying period of between one and three months follows, depending on the weight of the particular bresaola. The meat loses up to 40% of its original weight during aging.

In Valtellina, a similar process is applied to smaller pieces of meat. This produces a more strongly flavoured product, slinzega, which is similar to South African biltong. Traditionally, horse meat was used for slinzega, but now other meats, such as venison and pork, are used, as well.

Serving

As an antipasto, bresaola is usually sliced paper-thin and served at room temperature or slightly chilled. It is most commonly eaten on its own, but may be drizzled with olive oil and lemon juice or balsamic vinegar, and served with rocket (rucola, arugula) salad, cracked black pepper, and freshly shaved Parmesan cheese. (AHA!)  

First literary evidences of Bresaola go back to 15th century, but its origin is certainly older. Until the early 17th century its production was kept for familiar consumption. In 19th century Bresaola’s production and trade strongly increased, starting export to near Switzerland. Today Bresaola is widespread all over Italy and it’s conquering new foreign markets.

Saba, Vin Cotto, Mosto Cotto: What is the difference?

They're basically all the same thing, although mosto cotto and saba (cooked grape must) are more similar by some explanations than vin cotto, (cooked wine) but saba is referred to vin cotto in Southern Italy, so I'm not completely sure there's that much of a product difference between cooked grape must and cooked wine; the bottom line is, the names is interchangeable and regional.

"Syrup vinegar that is produced from the unfermented residue referred to as "must" that is produced from Trebbiano grapes as they are processed into wine. Fruity in flavor, Saba is a mildly sweetened vinegar that is aged for over 2 years, going through a natural fermentation process that concentrates the consistency and flavor of this vinegar as it matures and becomes balsamic vinegar. In Italian, Saba is often labeled as mosto cotto, which translates into "cooked grape juice." It may also be referred to as Saba grape mosto reduction. It is a vinegar that is typically served with meats, poultry, and desserts or combined with other sauces to enhance the flavors."